Why didn’t Maxwell Knight publish The Frightened Face of Nature?
Maxwell Knight was aware of the furore and criticism from chemical companies and others when Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring in 1962. Indeed, he credits her work in…
BIRD GARDENING – HOW DID IT START?
Knight the pioneer: How did ‘bird gardening’ become established in British life? Simon King reveals its origins in the ideas and writing of the famous WW2 spy catcher – none…
Camberley Natural History Society’s Exhibition at Surrey Heath Museum – Photo blog
Maxwell Knight was amongst the original founders of the Camberley Natural History Society in 1946. Source: Camberley Natural History Society’s Exhibition at Surrey Heath Museum – Photo blog
How did ‘bird gardening’ become established in British life?
Simon King and Margaret Cooper reveal its origins in the ideas and writing of the famous WW2 spy catcher – none other than Maxwell Knight. Available in this week’s Cage & Aviary…
Maxwell Knight’s cabinet featured in Cage & Aviary Birds publication:
Copyright: see acknowledgements
New Statesman: Cuckoos, le Carré, and conservation: the forgotten files of the real-life “M”
Read Anoosh Chakelian’s article on the New Statesman website Copyright: see acknowledgements
The Guardian: Spectre of destruction: the lost manuscript of the real-life ‘M’
“Breaking open a locked cabinet belonging to Maxwell Knight, naturalist and spy, yields not Top Secret documents but a passionate scientific plea…” – Read Simon King’s article in the Guardian…
M’s (Maxwell Knight) Spectre: The Frightened Face of Nature
During the 1960s Maxwell Knight – the real-life “M” – was working on a manuscript entitled The Frightened Face of Nature, snatching brief moments to record his thoughts on how man had treated nature so unfairly for the first fifty years of the twentieth century. The manuscript documented Knight’s greatest fears that, time was running out for nature and that its greatest threat was man’s destructive revolution and the reverse of evolution.
“By all means let man use his great powers to invent new devices; let him give of his best to see that all shall benefit from his genius in curing, healing, and housing those in want. But do not suggest that this can only be done by destroying what is fine to look at or listen to, whether in the arts or nature.
If human brains can find means of defying space, improving means of communication and bouncing pictures off satellites, surely he can also discover ways in which these things can be done without destruction – for destruction first is the cry of mad revolution and is the reverse of evolution.”
– Maxwell Knight
The manuscript was kept under lock and key and it remained a secret until 2015 when the (hitherto unpublished) manuscript was discovered inside M’s personal filing cabinet…
Copyright: see acknowledgements
